Development of a social impact assessment for the water environment: A professional perspective
Journal
Water (Switzerland)
Journal Volume
13
Journal Issue
23
Date Issued
2021
Author(s)
Abstract
Climate change and population growth are increasing the frequency of flooding and drought, resulting in conflict over water resources. Social impact assessments (SIA) of the allocation and management of water resources provide a way of reducing and resolving such conflicts. This article first explores the nature of SIA for water environments through an inductive analysis of the cases mentioned in more than 30 papers. Next, it identifies important advantages of SIA over integrated water resources management (IWRM) practices and indicates that while IWRM solves water-related issues to improve social well-being, it cannot entirely grasp the overall social impact of planned interventions. Following this, it analyzes the water environment governance structures in Taiwan, using questionnaire responses from water environment management professionals to discuss challenges of effectively implementing water environment SIA. The questionnaire covers 26 detailed tasks of SIA advocated by Vanclay et al. This research is the first to have evaluated the difficulty of the tasks. The survey results can be used as a reference for the implementation of SIA in other regions. The results show that (1) the water environment SIA is indeed necessary; (2) Taiwan’s water environment professionals need to improve from their current lack of understanding of SIA; (3) it is difficult to implement the water environment SIA; (4) it is necessary for SIA to clarify and integrate the authorities and responsibilities of relevant government departments; (5) the professionals believe the myth of quantification of SIA; and (6) water environment SIA must be integrated with the existing IWRM. Finally, we emphasize the need to integrate SIA and IWRM in a mutually complementary way, and illuminate the need for an integrated SIA framework for water environment management. ? 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Subjects
Governance
Integrated water resources management (IWRM)
Social impact assessment (SIA)
Taiwan
Water environment
Economic and social effects
Environmental management
Population statistics
Surveys
Water management
Environment management
Integrated water resource management
Integrated Water Resources Management
Population growth
Social impact assessment
Social impact assessments
Water environments
Waters resources
Climate change
climate change
freshwater environment
population growth
social impact assessment
water resource
Type
journal article